History Detectives

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For two years, the Library of Congress has been harnessing the public's knowledge using the power of Web 2.0 tools to gather information about its photography collections.

In January 2008, the Library launched a pilot project with the photo-sharing website Flickr to display publicly held photography collections. The site, called the Commons, offers the public easier access to collections housed in organizations such as the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, and, hopefully, gathers more details about specific images.

"This pilot project is a statement about the power of the Web and user communities to help people better acquire information, knowledge and -- most importantly -- wisdom," Matt Raymond, the Library's director of communications, wrote in a blog post announcing the initiative. "One of our goals, frankly, is to learn as much as we can about that power simply through the process of making constructive use of it."

When the project began January 2008, the Library posted 3,100 photographs to the Commons. The collection now contains 8,600 images and has received more than 25 million views. Michelle Springer, the Library's project manager for digital initiatives, called the albums a "great source of questions and a steppingstone to research."

The Library staff has asked the public to submit comments about unidentified images that have been posted. The Flickr community has been researching photographs, and providing names, dates and locations of some missing details. For example, many have used The New York Times news archive to identify images in the "News in the 1910" collection.

The project team moderates comments and updates the Library's records with facts such as names and dates. Anecdotes that might have been submitted for a particular photo aren't included in the Library's catalog, but each image is linked back to its respective Flickr album, where the public can read the personal stories.

Identifying images isn't the only goal, according to Barbara Natanson, head of the Library's prints and photographs division reading room. "We're making people aware of the resources, and we feel like we've really accomplished that," she said. For example, in an album titled "1930s-40s in color," Natanson said, "it's less looking for an ID as much as making people aware of the war years in color."

Springer said different communities have shown interest in the images in a variety of ways. For example, people have based short stories and paintings on the collections, and one woman uses them as inspiration for her handmade purses.

"It's also a good venue for special exhibitions," Springer said. "There's a very nice cross-pollination to let the Flickr community know what's going on, and it's nice to have another avenue to communicate out to the public events happening out at the library. It's been very well-received externally and internally."

Click here to view some of the photos posted to Flickr. Each image includes a sample comment submitted about the image and a link to the Flickr album where the photo is posted.